


If We Are Victorious In One More Battle

by dorkilysoulless (custodian)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Barebacking, Bottom Dean, Castiel's Loss of Grace, Demon Dean Winchester, Demons are not well-known for their empathy, Guilty Castiel, M/M, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-19 21:14:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2403104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/custodian/pseuds/dorkilysoulless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The smell of sulfur wakes him.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Castiel panics, grasps the handle of the angel blade under his pillow, and twists in his sheets to face the danger. He’s weak — he’s barely an angel anymore — but he’s still a warrior. Broken or not, he’s a warrior.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Heya, Cas. Heard you were looking for me.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>The shock is enough that Castiel almost drops the blade. And then he grips it tighter, sensing more than seeing the corruption that has seeped into Dean’s soul. He fumbles with the bedside lamp. A click, and the room lights up dim yellow.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Dean.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	If We Are Victorious In One More Battle

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a fill for [Hellatus Prompt Fic Tuesday](http://itfeltpurefic.tumblr.com/hellatus) on my Tumblr blog.
> 
> Title is taken from a quote from King Pyrrhus after the Battle of Asculum: "[If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.](http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Pyrrhus*.html#21)"

The smell of sulfur wakes him.

Castiel panics, grasps the handle of the angel blade under his pillow, and twists in his sheets to face the danger. He’s weak — he’s barely an angel anymore — but he’s still a warrior. Broken or not, he’s a warrior.

“Heya, Cas. Heard you were looking for me.”

The shock is enough that Castiel almost drops the blade. And then he grips it tighter, sensing more than seeing the corruption that has seeped into Dean’s soul. He fumbles with the bedside lamp. A click, and the room lights up dim yellow.

“Dean.”

In the light, it’s worse. Dean’s face is an odd mismatch. He isn’t monstrous. He should be monstrous. Instead, there’s a look of ease on Dean’s face, as if the weight of his years has been lifted from him almost entirely. There’s still a wrongness to him, like blood and rage and ripping teeth, but Castiel is hemorrhaging grace and lacks the will to look below the surface.

Here is his Righteous Man, fallen. His greatest victory. His most terrible failure.

Dean’s eyes flick down to the blade, and he licks his lip. “You gonna jab me with that pig-sticker, or can we talk?”

“Talk?”

“Sure. I mean, unless you’re hunting me—”

Castiel lowers his eyes, searches without seeing. The word hurts more than he’d imagined it could. Dean’s hand closes over his, and Castiel lets him wrest the blade from his fingers. It lands on the frayed carpet with a soft thump.

He is vulnerable now.

No, he was vulnerable from the moment Dean found him. A demon with the Mark of Cain and the First Blade? Even when he was a seraph commanding a garrison that would have struck him as suicidal. Here, almost naked in a hotel bed, unarmed and burning out? Perhaps Dean will give him a swift death. Unlikely, given Castiel’s status as a strategic asset and Dean’s experience in the pit, but…

“You’re not even scared, are you?” Dean whispers against the soft skin behind Castiel’s ear.

The touch is unexpected, and he tilts his head to the side to bare his throat before he realizes what he’s doing. Dean chuckles and climbs onto the mattress, straddling him. His hands skirt up Castiel’s bare ribs, warm and familiar.

He should stop. He should push away. The splinters of his weakened grace recoil at Dean’s touch, hard-wired instinct warring with the ache in his chest and the thrum his blood. There is pleasure under Dean’s hands, but those hands are debased and fatal. His lips are a grave. His tongue…

Castiel turns his head, takes Dean’s face in his hands, and kisses him. He tastes death there, but also sweetness and heat.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel whispers when their mouths part. He presses his forehead against Dean’s.

“For what?”

“Failing you.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Dean murmurs, then kisses him again, deep and slow, like he’s trying to suck away the poison in Castiel’s heart. “What’s the quote? Dude who hunts monsters goes monster sooner or later? You can’t blame yourself for the natural order of things.”

“Dean—”

“No. Enough talking.”

Dean shoves him down onto his back with one hand and maybe a little too much force. His eyes flash black as a sharp smile creeps across Dean’s face. With his free hand, Dean traces a long line down Castiel’s body, cheek to navel. He shudders under the touch, breath catching in his throat.

“There it is. There’s the fear.”

Dean leans down to taste Castiel’s mouth, all scrape of teeth and sucking lips. He seems almost ravenous. His body moves rough and clothed against Castiel’s bare skin, and there’s a growing hardness in his jeans that’s unmistakable. And then, of course, there’s the other hand, gripping Castiel’s hip, thumb tracing the tender skin back and forth.

“You didn’t, uh—didn’t come to talk,” he stammers when Dean’s mouth moves on to his adam’s apple.

Dean shrugs and sucks a mark into Castiel’s skin, too high to conceal with a collar and tie. His hand slips in between them to free Castiel’s semi-hard cock from his blankets and briefs, and he strokes it slow and firm until it’s at full attention. His mouth travels where it will, leaving soft kisses and stinging bite marks in equal measure.

He tries to resist. Oh, Father, Castiel tries. He imagines every tainted touch leaving streaks of ash across his skin, but it’s useless. His heart, his body, his whole being wants Dean. Needs him.

“Please,” he whispers. “Dean, please.”

And like that, Dean releases him to focus on pushing away the blankets and stripping away Castiel’s briefs. Dean sweeps his tongue up the inside of Castiel’s thigh as he settles in, still fully clothed between spread and naked legs.

He doesn’t take Castiel into his mouth right away. Instead, he licks and tastes, mouthing his way from the spot where leg and hip meet and up the underside of Castiel’s shaft, one hand holding his cock in place while the other traces circuitous routes up and down his belly and thighs.

Dean’s lips and tongue are sin made flesh, and Castiel is burning by the time Dean’s lips close around him. He can’t help reaching for Dean, desperate to touch him back. His fingers close in Dean’s hair — longer than he remembers seeing it — and for a split second they make eye contact.

And then Dean slides a spit-slick finger into Castiel’s ass and presses, and Castiel’s not looking at much of anything because all he can do arch and shudder and gasp. There’s no slow build. Dean knows his buttons and exploits them, practically shoving Castiel over the edge.

It’s embarrassing, how suddenly he comes. Dean doesn’t even flinch as he swallows. He just takes Castiel’s load in stride and cleans him with ruthless efficiency. “Looks like somebody hasn’t been keeping the pipes clean,” he says with a wink as he sits up.

Castiel’s got no good response for that. He just stares up at Dean, who slides his legs over the edge of the bed. For an awful moment it looks like he might leave. Instead, Dean reaches down to unlace his boots.

“Don’t worry. I think you can make it up to me, can’t you, Cas?”

“Of course,” Castiel says, skin flushed now with arousal and not a little shame. He sits up and moves down the bed to press against Dean’s back. His heart aches, and his head feels off-balance. Every instinct in him screams that this isn’t Dean. Not really. That man is dead, broken, and very probably past redemption.

That man is on the edge of his bed, warm and waiting and impossible to refuse.

Castiel slides his hands around Dean’s waist and relishes the solidity of him. He presses kisses against the nape of Dean’s neck and undoes his belt with a familiar motion. Dean lifts up to let Castiel undo his jeans and push them down enough that Dean can shove them the rest of the way off. Castiel moves on to the buttons of Dean’s shirt, only leaning away from Dean’s body to pull the fabric down his broad shoulders.

There’s something sturdier about him now, Castiel thinks as he strokes up Dean’s bare back. His hands glide over Dean’s shoulders and down his biceps. He moves to wrap his arms around Dean’s waist again, but Dean turns, and hauls them both down to the mattress.

Dean’s skin is a map of battles, Castiel knows, but he’s not prepared to see the jagged white scar where Metatron’s blade ended him. His fingers falter, and his eyes flick up to Dean’s impatient face.

“Problem?”

“N-no.” Castiel swallows. He understands, suddenly, that some of the tightness in his chest is more than need and loneliness. It’s mourning. He closes his eyes. His hands move on: waist, hip, thigh. “I missed this.”

“Show me how much.”

Castiel does. He slots Dean’s growing hard-on against the groove of his hip and clings to him, rubbing skin-to-skin. Their mouths meet, and Castiel fights down instinct again just so he can feel Dean’s hungry mouth, the slow rut of his hips, the scratch of nails down his back.

Their legs tangle together. Castiel drags kisses down Dean’s face to his throat. He bites and licks and gasps against the skin — he might even get hard again at this rate — and Dean doesn’t disappoint. His hands and mouth and body are needy

It’s almost the same. Harsher, maybe. Rougher.

Impulse drives him back to Dean’s hair. He digs his fingers in and grips, harder than he’d have ever dared before, and pulls. Dean bucks and growls against him, eyes wide and black, and the jerk and dig of his cock is unmistakable.

“Fuck,” Castiel whispers. “You like that.”

“Shit yeah, I like that,” Dean practically snarls.

“You didn’t used to like that.”

“Yeah, well, now I do.” Dean’s hand wraps around Castiel’s cock. He squeezes and strokes as he grinds against Castiel’s hip. “I’d like it even better if you did it while you nailed me to this mattress.”

Well, getting hard again isn’t going to be a problem, but…

“Lube. Um. I don’t have—”

Dean grabs his hand, guides it back between his legs so that Castiel can feel the slickness there. “Prepped ahead. Now do it.”

Father help him, Castiel wants to.

He grabs Dean by the arm and twists as he shoves himself up, pinning Dean down in a submission hold. He slides two fingers inside of Dean’s ass. Sure enough, he’s slick and open, and the moan from the mattress more than confirms that Dean’s ready.

He lines himself up. Hesitates.

“The hell, Cas?”

“Condom?”

Dean laughs. “Cas, you’re a burned-out angel. I’m a fucking demon. How are you stuck on sex ed 101? Prioritize, man.”

He prioritizes. Dean curses into the sheets with a voice like warm oil, writhing in Castiel’s grip under slow thrusts. It’s good — better, he thinks, because it’s wrong, everything about this is wrong — and something horrible twists in Castiel’s belly as he realizes how well his instinct to destroy demons meshes with pinning Dean beneath him.

Castiel grabs Dean’s hair and pulls his head back. Slams into him. Relishes the way it knocks Dean’s breath out of him in a sharp, soft plea. He speeds up, relentless, riding his own waves of lust and wrath to chase that bare thread of vulnerability.

For the first time tonight, Dean almost sounds human. Castiel tightens his grip.

Dean’s orgasm is violent. He comes with a shout and a struggle, and Castiel has to wrench Dean’s arm almost to breaking to hold him in place. He shoves Dean’s face into the mattress while he fucks him through and past every clench and shudder, wrecking him, reducing him to a mewling, limp mass.

It feels like triumph. It feels like loss.

Castiel pulls out, turns Dean over, and spills onto his chest and face. He watches, panting, as Dean wipes his lip with the pad of his thumb, then sucks it clean.

“See? That wasn’t such a chore.” Dean’s voice is low and rough, a little hoarse. He wipes the rest of Castiel’s load away with the sheet, then reaches over the edge of the bed for his clothes. “We should do this more often.”

Castiel blinks. "You’re not staying.”

“Uh, no.” Dean is dismissive, as if it’s ridiculous Castiel should even have asked.

“Right.” He looks down. “No, that’s…that’s probably best.”

“Aw, look at you. Still sweet on me after everything.” Dean pats Castiel’s cheek, and smirks when he pulls away from his touch. “Sweet and way too proud.”

“Just go.”

When Castiel looks up again, Dean is gone. Vanished without even using the door. 

He digs his fingers into the sheet and clenches his jaw, then sucks in a deep breath. He should shower. He should leave.

Castiel buries his face in his hands and resists the urge to smash the hotel lamp into a hundred pieces.


End file.
